


love and some verses you hear

by zombeesknees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombeesknees/pseuds/zombeesknees
Summary: The night of the storm and heartbreak was the night everything changed; follows "many see natural beauty folded within petals of a rose" | Written many moons ago on LJ.





	love and some verses you hear

The rain was truly torrential. Thick, solid sheets, icy and unrelenting. 

Rose thought it was only fitting after what they’d done that day. She crowded close to the Doctor as he fumbled with his key, clutching his coat (he’d draped it over her shoulders as they ran from the oncoming storm) close, though it made little difference — she was still soaked through to the skin. Her teeth were audibly chattering, and she knew he was just as cold; the key trembled in his hand, and he had difficulty forcing it into the lock.

They staggered inside the TARDIS, accompanied by several litres of water and a violent blast of freezing air. “…Turn up the heater,” the Doctor muttered, rushing about the control room, dripping water everywhere.

Rose draped his coat on the coat rack to dry, shivering as she rubbed at her arms and stepped around him, bee-lining for her room.

Ten minutes later she was sitting in bed, wearing an old tee shirt and jogging pants, a blanket pulled over her shoulders, her hair combed and dripping. The heat had been turned up but still she shivered. 

There was a quick, sharp knock at her door. 

“Come in.”

He hadn’t changed out of his wet clothes yet; only taken off his suit jacket and Converses and loosened his tie (her favourite tie, the brown one with blue swirls). The rain in his hair glinted in the light. “You alright?”

“Yeah, sure, why wouldn’t I be?” she said lightly.

He gave her a _look_. “Rose.”

“…No, no, I’m not okay.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “What we did today, Doctor, it was horrible.”

“It was the right thing to do.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “It was the only thing we _could_ do.”

“Linette and Cardogar, though. We destroyed them, Doctor. We broke their hearts. How can we be happy about that?”

“We did it to save their lives, to save the lives of their people. They could never be together, Rose, even they knew that. Underneath it all, they knew the only way this could have ended. Together, with his ice and her fire, they would have destroyed the planet.”

“But how, if there are any higher powers, could such people fall in love? How could God, or whatever, make them the way they are, give them all of that power, and then let them fall in love? It’s not fair.” She felt the crack in her voice before it escaped, and didn’t try to hold it back.

“I know it isn’t, I know.” 

He paused for a moment, marshaling his thoughts. “I wish there had been some other way for Linette and Cardogar. If there was some way to change things for them, I would do it in a heartbeat. But in the end, we did the right thing, and they knew it was the right thing. With time, they may come to terms with it. We can hope, anyway.”

“I can’t get away from the look on his face,” she said, staring at his tie. “I _saw_ his heart break, Doctor, I _know_ I did. His eyes went hollow and empty.”

The Doctor was silent. He had seen the same expression on Linette’s face, and it had cut him just as deeply. He had seen similar emotions on hundreds of faces on dozens of planets over the centuries; the hard choices never became easier, especially when hearts were on the line. It saddened him that Rose had been there to see the aftermath of his decision, that she had had to share in the heartache.

“Doctor, I know we did the right thing. I know we did. But logic doesn’t help sometimes. Sometimes I can’t help but be an emotional, stupid girl.”

“Never stupid, Rose,” he said fiercely. “You empathize with people, which is never a stupid or bad thing. Sometimes I… I look at things too logically. Sometimes I weigh the pros and cons and then act, without taking the fragility of people and hearts into consideration. Sometimes I’m too cold and hard with people.”

“You care, Doctor. I can see that, and I know others can, too.” She laid her pale, cold hand on his. 

“Because of you, Rose. You show me the right way, how I should behave. For so many years, after the War, I traveled alone. I made myself so harsh and unrelenting, so black and white with my decisions.”

“You’re still unrelenting sometimes,” she said, managing a smile. “Remember that argument with Isaac Asimov about robots?”

He grinned for a moment, a flash of glee that disappeared quickly. “Even so, I’m serious, Rose. You make me a better person.”

She shrugged and looked away when she felt the blush rise in her cheeks, embarrassed. 

He covered her hand with his, brushed his thumb against hers. “You’re cold; do you want the heat turned up?”

“No, I’ll be okay.” She was warmer already, just from the touch of his hand, and she felt herself blushing anew. _Like a bloody schoolgirl_ , she thought. _With a ridiculous crush on a professor._

But no, that wasn’t right at all. She was old enough to know what she wanted, and she fancied herself brave enough to reach for what she wanted, to _have_ what she wanted. And this wasn’t a crush, and he wasn’t a professor — at times he was her teacher, yes, but she had long ago recognized what he really was to her. Not just a designated driver, not just a means of getting around the universe, not just a friend, though he was all of those. 

He was the Doctor, a strange alien with a mind she could never fully understand or fathom, and she loved him.

He felt her pulse quicken under his thumb, the rush of blood under the soft skin. He thought of the other day — of the kiss, of the embrace, that had nearly staggered him. Interrupted, and he hadn’t been sure if he was relieved or annoyed by it at the time. Relieved, because how could he let all of this happen? How could he let himself fall in love with this human girl? Annoyed because it had been everything he’d hoped for, wished for, dreamed of, and he had been robbed. Annoyed because he had finally realized that everything he felt and tried to hide and ignore hadn’t been wholly on his side; there was reciprocation.

She was turning to him, and he wasn’t sure what he would do. What he should do, what he could do. 

But she took control before he could decide anything.

“You shouldn’t sit around in wet clothes,” she said quietly, a faint tremor in her voice. “Catch your death of cold.”

“Common misconception,” he managed to whisper as she gripped his shirt, the pink of her nails dark against the damp white fabric. Her lips met his, and there was no longer enough breath to spare for words. 

The tie came off first, sliding from his neck, slipping from her fingers to the floor. Then his shirt — she fumbled with the buttons, almost losing her patience, until his steadier hands handled them for her. His skin was cold to the touch, the rain still slick on his back. She pulled him closer, shared her warmth with him, until his arms and neck were hot against her hands. 

He pulled the faded tee over her head, spared a fraction of a second to smile at her flyaway hair and flushed cheeks, had barely moved his eyes downwards before she was kissing him again, those dark lips reminiscent of strawberries. 

She could hardly put into words what he was like. His skin against hers was shocking, almost literally. She felt something building up between them, something like static electricity, a current passing from his body to hers. She could taste time on his lips, a slightly metallic zing that was familiar; the taste of the air inside the TARDIS. 

It was almost laughable, at this turning point in their relationship: the thought occurred to her that until the other day, until their first true kiss, she had never seen him as a truly sexual being. Flirtatious, yes, and she had certainly been attracted to him. And she knew he had had a family once, children and grandchildren. But this was something new — the Doctor as an overtly sexual man. 

How ridiculous. 

They fell back against the pillows piled up by her headboard, pushing aside blankets and clothes, overwhelmed with the sheer force of each other. She could almost hear the tumult of her heart in her chest, of his just above hers. He was light-headed with sensation, running his hands along the curves of her body as if to reassure himself that she was real, that this was happening.

The rise and fall of her chest with each gasped breath was intoxicating. His mouth was at her neck and she shivered at the brush of his teeth against the hollow of her throat. Her right hand clutched at his shoulder as the left tightened into a fist around the edge of a sheet. 

“Rose,” he murmured in her ear.

\---

How natural it felt, to lie like this, his body molded to hers like a corresponding puzzle piece. A freckled arm was tight around her waist, keeping her close — as if she had any desire to pull away. 

She faintly knew that this complicated things, and probably a lot. Not just for her — how would she talk to her Mum about this, after all? — but for him, for this life. Somewhere, far away in the very back of her mind, she realized that something this beautiful, this sweet, this perfect could not possibly last forever. 

And how did one 21-year-old former shopgirl from London come to terms with a relationship with a 903-year-old Time Lord who had over a millennia’s worth of knowledge in his head?

He moved slightly, rustling the sheets and breathing deeply against her neck. And for this moment, this one moment out of a million trillion, she decided she didn’t really care. Not yet.


End file.
